Sunday, January 31, 2010

Among the mounting criticisms of the IPCC is the question of knowledge sources. Some attacks on the IPCC are dismissive of the findings because local knowledge was used to make a claim. I think this is problematic.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Typically: When you are 18 years old you want to rearrange the world to suit your vision of utopia. Thirty or forty years later you are content to rearrange the furniture so you don’t fall over the table on your way to the toilet. Does this hypothesis hold in climate science? Does the task of saving the world from immanent climate related catastrophe have an inverse relationship to age?

Thursday, January 28, 2010

It is interesting to note what President Obama has to say about climate change, especially when he addresses the skeptical Republicans:

'I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But here's the thing -- even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future -- because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.'

Of course, good science is important. But climate policies, be it mitigation or adaptation, do not exclusively depend on 100 % scientific evidence. There are other arguments for both mitigation and adaptation, and there are other powerful mechanisms at work - such as nationalist interests. Climate policies don't stand or fall with IPCC reports or other scientific evidence; there are many cultural, economic and political reasons for adaptation and mitigation. Of course, the conflicts about manipulated data and conflicts of interest have to be solved; but the future of the world does not depend on these mostly inner-scientific conflicts, nor do climate policies.

The fact that relative small scientific mistakes, public misperceptions of the scientific method, and maybe the misconduct of a few can shake up a major field of international policy indicates that the institutional coupling between science and policy is too tight. The reputation of Harvard would never be at stake only because a few alumni became felons. In climate research, the outcome of international negotiations depends on a level of moral integrity among IPCC scientists that is unlikely to be found in priesthood.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

This is a re-posting of http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ piece titled 'Science chief John Beddington calls for honesty on climate change'. The article can be found at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7003622.ece The article begins: 'The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser.'

We have again used the opportunity to survey our readers; no claims are made that this survey would lead to representative or even consistent results. Instead it is just a snapshot. Anyway, it turns out that really many of our readers are scientists - mostly natural scientist. A few decision makers and journalists are among our readers, but hardly any NGO members. And our readers read other blogs as well, in particular Climate Audit, but also Real Climate.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

With the current fiasco concerning the IPCC reports perhaps it is appropriate to see what the climate science community thought about the reports before the report hit the fan. Using the data from the 2008 (after The Report) survey of climate scientists, it seems that most climate scientists (at least those in the survey sample) tended to agree with the IPCC conclusions. There was even a significant minority that claimed the IPCC tended to under estimate things.

Recently there has been discussion of exaggerations and possibly misleading documents. In November RealClimate posted the Copenhagen document for discussion. I raised the following questions, which were posted but got no reply.

You can bet that the author reads Klimazwiebel and Pielke jr.'s blog. It is interesting that all the different elements such as the hockey stick debate, climategate, the Pachauri business and Himalaya glaciers add up to a consistent (skeptical) narrative. At least for the Spiegel journalist, with Pielke jr. and Hans von Storch as his principal witnesses.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Roger Pielke Jr. reports on his blog about an interesiting, if unexpected entanglement:

There is another important story in involving the Muir-Wood et al. 2006 paper that was misrepresented by the IPCC as showing a linkage between increasing temperatures and rising damages from extreme weather events. The Stern Review Report of the UK government also relied on that paper as the sole basis for its projections of increasing damage from extreme events. In fact as much as 40% of the Stern Reivew projections for the global costs of unmitigated climate change derive from its misuse of the Muir-Wood et al. paper.

The government website which hosts the Stern Review was changed in the meantime (quietly) to correct the data. Problem is that the maths for Stern's cost benefit analysis don't add up any more.

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

In a paper for the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London published in 2005, Robert Watson, former IPCC chairman, has some interesting thoughts about the relation between science and policy. He thinks that scenarios are the crucial tool to influence policy makers:

Some readers were experiencing problems with posting comments. It is difficult for us to trace them, as they do not happen to all users. For instance, I do not have any problems even when posting comments as plain anonymous user. Googleing has not helped me to find out what the source of the problem may be. I have changed the options to post comments (pop-up window), but I am not sure whether this is the correct solution. If readers find this too cumbersome I will set the options back again to 'comment embedded below post'. Any help in this regard is of course welcome.

Quirin Schiermeier has now responded to my claim of false direct quotes of mine in the recent issue of nature. I find his response acceptable - things happen in the heat of time limits. When attributing specific (direct) quotes to somebody, it is good journalistic practice to ask for authorization - indeed a common practice among European and North American newspapers and journals. I would also expect that from "nature". -- But I have to admit that the damage done is not large. Its more about the nuances.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Sorry, this is only for German speaking readers, it was on German TV a few days ago and is very interesting, if a bit tongue-in-cheek.
Major biblical themes are applied to climate change alarmism, Sociologist Norber Bolz says: "an atheist society such as ours can finally believe again, this time on the basis of (climate) science"

In 2009, the American thinker reported some events related to a publication in the Inetrnational Journal of Climatology (see also Roger Pielke jr.'s webblog), which I found difficult to believe. When I came across this web-page, I approached the chief editor of the International Journal of Climatology, Glenn McGregor, on 21. December 2009 and asked him: "Do you have a comment on that, possibly somewhere on your web-page, so that I may direct the readers of my new weblog 'Klimazwiebel' to this explanation and contextualisation?" Now, on 21 January 2010 I got an answer: "I will compose a response to the AT article in due course."
(corrected for clarification, 22. January 2010, HvS)

Quirin Schiermeier quotes me with "You need to be very circumspect about the added value of downscaling to regional impacts," agrees Hans von Storch in this week's issue of nature. And: he cautions, "planners should handle them with kid gloves. Whenever possible, they'd rather wait with spending big money on adaptation projects until there is more certainty about the things to come." I have not spoken with Mr Schiermeier about regional modelling, at least not recently; the term "kid gloves" is unknown to me, not part of my vocabulary. I have asked him for evidence that I have said these sentences to whom.

Indeed, I have been in contact with Quirin Schiermeier earlier this year, asking for "myths" about climate change. I have offered him three cases, none of them had any reference to regional modelling. He had told me that he would use the first of my myths, but obviously he decided to use my name differently.

Monday, January 18, 2010

I received the following email regarding some of the results of the survey of climate scienitsts. Rather than try to answer the questions I thought it more appropriate to post them and let a broader range of opinions to be presented.

Recently I re-read Milan Kundera’s ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’. (Apologetically, I sometimes tear myself away from the climate change issues.) Within the context of the book Kundera presents an interesting discourse on what he calls The Grand March and an interesting discourse on the concept of kitsch. Borrowing heavily on Kundra this brief discussion looks at the role of kitch in the global warming issue.

Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).

It now appears that this claim was not based on peer reviewed research at all but on a news story in the New Scientist published eight years before the IPCC's report.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

I got this inquiry from Russia: "I found some titles of your interesting publications, but they are not available in our local libraries, which do not subscribe foreign editions. If possible, please, explain me what are the main pitfalls in the present practice of policy advice concerning man-made climate change in your opinion? What are the main causes of discrepancy between scientific knowledge about climate change and its understanding in the public?" Here is my answer, to which I invite comments by the readers of Klimazwiebel (please stick to the issue in your comments!)

Sunday, January 10, 2010

A student has sent me five questions on the issue of man-made climate change. As they may be seen as typical, I answer them here on the Klimazwiebel. This may be useful – for the student, who will be able to read the comments of the readers of the blog, – for the bloggers to better understand the issues and concerns among lay people, – for me, who will have a critical assessment of my response to the student. The idea with this post is that the student will read it plus the comments - so that the different contributions should not represent too much piecework. Therefore, commenters, deal just with the questions raised, and try to make only one statement so that the material, which eventually gathers, is compact!

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Those persons expecting a rapid increase of temperatures may have felt a certain unease during the first 10 years of the 21st century, when the global temperature did not seem to have risen as rapidly as it did in the 80's and 90's in the 20th century. Sometimes a knee-jerk response has been to deny this slow down of the temperature increase, and later, squabble about the sign of the estimated trend and about the cherry-picking of start and end years to calculate this trend.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

This short comment is about a personal foray into publishing in ‘Science’. Before getting into detail of the submission and rejection of the comment, I would like to look at the financial model of Science, as it is somewhat unique (there other similar models but they are not the subject of this commentary).

Recently, my attention has been drawn to the essay "Good Science, Bad Politics" in The Wall Street Journal, written by Hans von Storch. I generally agree with his view on good science, and that action is needed to restore confidence in climate science. But while reading this article, I felt quite concerned - not because I think that all of his criticism is wrong, but rather because some of the points made in the article are not justified. In particular, I do not share the focus on the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) only, where a much more general discussion is necessary. As a former researcher at CRU, I believe some points need some clarification.

Monday, January 4, 2010

On the Guardian website Comment is Free, The IPCC chairman defends himself against allegations of conflict of interest. He writes:

The same group of climate deniers who have been active across the Atlantic have now joined hands to attack me personally, alleging business interests on my part which are supposedly benefiting me as well as the Indian Tata group of companies.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

The survey "CLISCI2008" among climate scientists has been used to examine the terminology concerning two key concepts in climate science, namely, predictions and projections, as used among climate scientists.

The first decade of the new millennium ended with Copenhagen, and everybody seems to agree that it was a failure. Who is to blame? Of course, the rich nations such as the US and Europe, or the developing countries such as China and India, or the small countries which dare to have their saying in this affair; in any case, the global community presented itself as a failed community, jeopardized by selfish politicians, national interests, and corrupt lobbies. Sigh. There were only a few reasonable men, but nobody listened to their arguments. But we will do so, in order to learn from the past for the future.

Sustainable use of KLIMAZWIEBEL

The participants of KLIMAZWIEBEL are made of a diverse group of people interested in the climate issue; among them people, who consider the man-made climate change explanation as true, and others, who consider this explanation false. We have scientists and lay people; natural scientists and social scientists. People with different cultural and professional backgrounds. This is a unique resource for a relevant and inspiring discussion. This resource needs sustainable management by everybody. Therefore we ask to pay attention to these rules:

1. We do not want to see insults, ad hominem comments, lengthy tirades, ongoing repetitions, forms of disrespect to opponents. Also lengthy presentation of amateur-theories are not welcomed. When violating these rules, postings will be deleted.2. Please limit your contributions to the issues of the different threads.3. Please give your name or use an alias - comments from "anonymous" should be avoided.4. When you feel yourself provoked, please restrain from ranting; instead try to delay your response for a couple of hours, when your anger has evaporated somewhat.5. If you wan to submit a posting (begin a new thread), send it to either Eduardo Zorita or Hans von Storch - we publish it within short time. But please, only articles related to climate science and climate policy.6. Use whatever language you want. But maybe not a language which is rarely understood in Hamburg.